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For all that Tom had cajoled Rafiel into shining his light under the bridge, he was somewhat scared of what it might uncover. What if Rafiel was correct, and it would show a bunch of dragons under there, all of them spying on Tom?

Choking back a laugh at the absurd image, Tom told himself he was getting worse than his father. Any moment now, he'd start asking himself if he'd eaten people.

Rafiel slip-skated to stand beside Tom, closer to the center of the river, and shone his flashlight searchingly into the space beneath the little arched bridge.

It was cozier under there than Tom expected—or at least, there was none of the trash he'd come to expect in that sort of place. He'd slept in that sort of place, sometimes, and it seemed never to be empty of a few rusting cans, a couple of unidentifiable, shredded cardboard boxes and perhaps the rotting body of a road-kill racoon. But under this bridge, it looked pretty clean. A couple of branches and some leaves, and other than that, just the clean shine of ice.

"Fine," Tom said. "I guess there isn't—"

But at that moment he heard the clack-clack-clack of alligator teeth that seemed to be Old Joe's way of laughing. It was faint and muffled, but definitely there. Tom grabbed Rafiel's wrist and aimed the flashlight at the place the sound had come from. There in the dark, Old Joe was squeezed under the place where the bridge came down to meet the bank and where it was, therefore, almost impossible to see.

Tom heard himself make a sound that was much like that of a steam train stopping. "Come out," he said, peremptorily. "Come out now."

He didn't know what he expected. Old Joe had obeyed him in the past, but in the past he'd caught Old Joe raiding The George's dumpster, and therefore he was, technically, trespassing on Tom's property. This time, Tom half-expected him to turn tail and run very fast, which, Tom understood, could be very fast indeed for an alligator.

Old Joe must have thought it too. For a moment there was a rebellious light in the tiny eyes, in the reflection of the flashlight. Rafiel must have thought of worse things, because he tried to pull the flashlight away from Tom and started to say, "Enough. You know—"

But Tom said, in his best voice of command, "Don't you dare. Don't you even think about it. I thought you were dead. I've been worried sick for days. Now, you'll come out here, shift, and explain yourself."

Old Joe slithered forward, swinging his tail from side to side. Rafiel must have been still pretty unsure about what the creature meant to do, because he took a step backwards. But Tom stood his ground and Old Joe gave him a sheepish look, as if sorry that he had tried to scare him, or perhaps simply sorry that he hadn't managed to scare him.

He shifted, right there on the snow, and stayed sitting down on his butt on the ice, his hands around his knees. Rafiel made a sound and said, "I have clothes. In my car."

Old Joe gave him an indulgent, almost amused look, the sort of look grown-ups give cute little children. "No need," he said. "I will shift again, after you're gone." He looked up at Tom. "And now, what do you want? Why did you think I was dead?"

"Because of the dire wolf," Tom said. "You said he had talked to you and you clearly knew him, so I thought . . ." He felt as though he'd lost some of his capacity to command and his righteous indignation too, now that Old Joe was treating him as if he had been silly and alarmist.

Old Joe shrugged. "Yes. Dire is a bad person," he said. "He and his council of ancients, always dictating the way in which people are supposed to live, the way in which shifter people are supposed to be people, and whom we should respect and whom we shouldn't." He shook his head. "He's a very bad person." He looked up at Tom, intently. "You stay away from him."

"I have every intention of staying away from him," Tom said, hearing his own voice sound sullen, like an annoyed little boy's.

"You stay away from her, too."

"Her?" Tom said, with some strange notion that Rafiel had paid Old Joe to warn him against Kyrie.

"The girl that came to the aquarium, in the car," Old Joe said. "Just a little while ago."

Rafiel cleared his throat. "I know he spends more on his hair product than most third world nations produce in one year, but that wasn't a girl. It was my subordinate, McKnight. Though he might have had a girl with him," he said, vaguely remembering something about Michelle, one of the part-timers.

"No. Not the police people!" Old Joe looked aggrieved, like they were both very dense. "The other woman. She came by, after the police left, with a guy. She left without the guy."

"You mean . . ." Rafiel took a step towards the aquarium, but Tom held his wrist. He couldn't say anything. He wasn't about to cast aspersions on what Old Joe was saying right in front of Old Joe, but he held Rafiel's wrist and said, "Wait."

Then to Old Joe, he said, "And you haven't seen Dire again? He hasn't talked to you again? Tried to find out things about us?"

That embarrassed look that he suspected meant Old Joe was lying, flitted across the alligator's face again. "Well," he said. "He came and he did ask me some questions. Like, what had happened at the castle, and all, but he . . ." He shrugged. "I didn't tell him anything that could hurt you. I swear I didn't. And then I ran away so I didn't have to tell him anything else." He looked at Tom, a look much like a glare from under his fringe of hair. "That's all I know. Can I go now?" And without waiting for permission, he shifted, and ran—in alligator form—back under the bridge, in a clacking of teeth, much like a fugitive snicker.

"We've got to go to the aquarium," Rafiel said.

Which meant, Tom thought, that he wasn't thinking at all. How was he going to get in? And if he did, how was he going to justify going into the aquarium to look for a body just now? Tom was fairly sure his friend hadn't thought this through.

"Wait. Let's go to your car and discuss this first," he told Rafiel.

"But—"

"Wait."

 

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Framed